


Tuesday/Thursday

by rillrill



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Economics, F/M, Maledom, Older Man/Younger Woman, Praise Kink, Rough Sex, Spanking, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-08-07 07:23:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7705693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rillrill/pseuds/rillrill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sansa is chronically late to Petyr Baelish's Tuesday afternoon econometrics lecture.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tuesday/Thursday

**Author's Note:**

> Someone prompted "Petyr/Sansa, student/professor" and this just kind of... happened.

She's late, again. It's never on purpose. It's as if the universe has got it out for her, the number of times she's been late to Baelish's econometrics class this month alone. She dashes down the corridor of Griffin Hall, slips into the lecture hall with her coffee in one hand and phone clutched tight against her other sweaty palm.

Baelish is already well into his lecture, seemingly; he pauses, looks askance at her with one eyebrow cocked as she treads as lightly as she can down the steps to the one remaining seat near the front. Sansa swallows, her mouth suddenly very dry; she struggles to sit down as quickly and gracefully as possible with the room's eyes all trained in her direction.

"Glad that you could join us, Ms..." Baelish trails off, as if he doesn't know her last name already. Sansa feels her cheeks heat up.

"Stark."

"Of course." He glances back at the whiteboard, already covered with equations and graphs she vaguely recognizes from the reading. "We're talking about wage distribution. Suppose you're interested in wage rates in the United States. Since they vary across workers, they can't be described with a static number. Can you tell us what we'd use to describe wages across demographics?"

Sansa swallows again, and tightens her grip on her latte, suddenly very aware of herself, her space, terrified of knocking it over. "A probability distribution," she says quietly, and he cocks his brow again.

"Mm?"

"You can view the wage of an individual worker as a random variable," she says slowly, "or use a probability density function, which is easier to visually interpret. Sir."

Baelish nods slowly, his face unchanged but for the small smile that quirks the side of his mouth. And Sansa exhales slightly. "I'd appreciate your punctuality next week," he says, and then turns back to the whiteboard. "As Ms. Stark pointed out, the probability density function makes more sense to the eye, as we see that density has peaked around $15 an hour..."

Sansa relaxes, if only slightly. She takes another deep breath and then pulls out her laptop, quietly as possible, and begins taking notes.

Baelish returns to his lecture without much fanfare otherwise, and Sansa watches him, studying him from her seat in the second row, her legs feeling just a little too long for the cramped space beneath the little swing-out desk. He's not bad-looking, not at all, really. Handsome, actually, if older than her taste — he can't be much younger than either of her parents. She notices, again, that there is no ring on his left hand.

She notices his hands, altogether, really: slim and handsome, like the rest of him. He toys with the blue Expo marker as he speaks, gestures with it like a baton, uses it to point to various students around the room. The idle thought flits into her brain like a wayward butterfly: what would those hands feel like? Would he touch her with as much ease as he speaks? She doesn't know where the thought comes from, really. It's not as if — she doesn't  _ like  _ him. Certainly not with her cheeks still warm from his scolding moments before.

But still. He does have  _ very _ nice hands.

She shakes the thought off, and returns to her notetaking, glancing at the screen of the laptop a seat below her to catch up.

When the lecture is through, she takes her time putting her things away, throws back the last few drops of coffee in her Starbucks cup before setting it aside. She doesn't mean to linger, really, but when everyone around her has made their way to the door, she's still sliding her laptop and day planner into her satchel, and she only glances up when she hears, "Ms. Stark?"

Her eyes flick up to meet Baelish's, and she musters a slight smile.

"I'm sorry I was late today," she says preemptively. "It's nothing personal. One thing led to another, it's just been a crazy day."

He seems to soften a little, and returns her smile, just barely. "That's the fourth time this semester you've been late to my class," he says. "I understand that things happen, but..."

"No, no, I'm so sorry," she says in a rush, butterflies erupting in her stomach again. "Really. I'm just chronically late. It's who I am as a person."

"Do me a favor," says Baelish, "and be on time next week. Can you do that for me?"

Sansa chews the inside of her cheek. His voice is casual, conversational, and he doesn't look at her with anything more than what seems like a normal amount of interest. She wonders if he  _ knows _ , somehow — if he could tell that she spent so much time during the lecture looking at him? Not just looking, but staring.  _ Wan _ —no, not wanting. That's a bridge too far.

"Ms. Stark?" he prompts again, and she starts a little and swallows.

"Of course. Yes, sir." It slips so easily out of her mouth that at first she's barely realized she's said it at all, and it's only off his little look of surprise that she takes another short breath and crams her book bag shut, picking up her empty coffee cup and making a hasty beeline for the door.

"I'll throw that out for you," says Baelish, gesturing for the empty cup, and she quickly doubles back. Their fingers brush as she hands it off, and Sansa can't gauge whether it's her imagination, or whether his fingertips really are as smooth and soft as they feel in that moment.

"Thank you," she says hesitantly, and he smiles.

"Go," he says, "or you'll be late for your next class."

She laughs, even though she doesn't have another class until late in the afternoon. She laughs, and she takes her leave again.

As she turns to close the door, leaving him in the empty lecture hall, she thinks she catches a glimpse of him running his thumb over the soft rose print of her lipstick along the lid. Probably not, though. Her imagination's probably getting away from her.

 

* * *

 

The Bourgeois Pig is crowded that night, the holdovers from the daytime study crowd still taking up tables that the wine-sipping night owls might otherwise take over. Sansa thanks God that Asha counts herself among the former; it makes it easier for Jeyne, Margaery and herself to slip in late and get a table with little fanfare. Asha never stays out late with them, always prefers the divier bars downtown and genuinely likes hanging with the townies, but she's happy enough to sip the last few mouthfuls of her green tea with them and shoot the shit for a few minutes.

"I hate this place," Jeyne grouses as she settles into the corner of their booth. "I don't want to drink at the same place I study. It throws my whole vibe off."

Sansa rolls her eyes. "You're free to go."

" _ Hell _ , no. The bartender's really hot," she shrugs, and dips her finger into Margaery's cocktail to taste. "This is good, what is it?"

Margaery, with a sideways glance at Jeyne's fingertips, pulls her drink closer to her own body. "An old fashioned. I'm into bourbon now."

Sansa laughs a little. "God, you're such a mom friend, Marg." She sips her rosé, watching the room intently. The Pig is the kind of place that transitions from a cozy tea room-slash-bakery during day hours to a quiet but refined wine bar at night. It's one of Sansa's few favorite places to drink near campus. She doesn't mind it here, despite Jeyne's frequent and vocal objections.

She doesn't, however, intend to drink too much. "I have so much studying to do," she says, changing the subject as she sips her wine again. "Baelish's class is going to kill me."

Asha snickers. "Baelish is so fucking weird. He tries to be a hardass, but everyone knows about that rule of his —"

"Rule?" Sansa raises her eyebrows, trying not to let her interest show. "What rule?"

"If your average is above 90%, he drops your lowest exam score," Margaery says, and Asha nods.

"He pulls you into his office to have a whole talk about what a big favor he's doing you, but yeah, he drops it," Asha adds. "It's honestly, like — it's a pain to sit through, but worth it. If you can keep your grades up, I mean."

"Mm." Sansa nods. "I guess. I mean, I kind of like him."

"Really?" Margaery says. "You don't find him, I don't know, kind of creepy?"

"Creepy works for some of us," Asha says, as she slides her notebooks into her backpack. "I'd ride that little face."

The others explode in laughter as Asha, looking half self-satisfied and half entirely indignant, stands swings her backpack over her shoulder. "Let she who hasn't at least thought about it cast the first stone," she says, in mock protestation, and Margaery eagerly raises her hand.

"I definitely haven't," she says, through her ongoing fit of giggles.

Jeyne smirks along with her. "Never even met the guy," she says, and they both look at Sansa expectantly.

It takes her a moment to notice, though, because she's entirely elsewhere. He does have a little face, she thinks, sliding her fingers up the stem of her wine glass — then comes back to earth much too quickly: "I haven't, either," she says. It's not exactly a lie. She hadn't, until Asha brought it up.

Asha looks unconvinced. "Well, more for me," she says. "Have a good night, ladies."

"Enjoy your old man mustache ride!" Jeyne shrieks after her, and she and Margaery dissolve into giggles again, Sansa only remembering to join them a few moments later.

 

* * *

 

That night, she pours herself into her dorm bed after a few more glasses of rosé, hazy and sleepy and pleasantly buzzed. Jeyne had left the Pig with the cute bartender's number; Margaery... Margaery would be fine, she always had a few people in her orbit. Sansa had put up resistance against the couple guys who swaggered over in pursuit of her number. "I have a boyfriend," she lied swiftly to one, and feigned illness to another. In reality, it was just that the idea of an unfulfilling casual thing with one of the several MFA lit students the bar tended to attract felt... unappealing, at best. Unproductive, that was the word for it. The cost/benefit analysis of casual sex had never once worked out in her favor, and there wasn't a single man in her orbit who had ever managed to coax an orgasm out of her, before, during, or after the act itself. All in all, Sansa thinks, what's sex with some unknown quantity, other than a means of willfully putting oneself at risk?

It's something she's never managed to adequately explain to her girlfriends, so she demurs the offer of another drink, citing a pile of homework. Instead, she lets herself into her room — thanking God that her days of roommates are behind her — and flops into bed with a heavy sigh.

Her mind returns, however improbably, to Professor Baelish. His odd little smile, and the way she thought she'd seen him touching her lipstick print. Something purrs inside her, a little bit of interest despite her better intentions. He's much too old, for starters — must be nearing fifty, somewhere in his mid forties at least — and he's not even her type, salt and pepper hair and those woolen sweaters and all. Chinos. She can't be attracted to a man in chinos.

But then again...

She licks her lips and sighs, reaching down to push up her skirt, to touch languidly between her legs, over her knit tights and panties beneath them. She's just drunk enough to feel no shame about it, letting out a little sigh and closing her eyes as she wrenches her tights and underwear down in one go. They tangle around her legs and she takes a shallow breath as the cold air of her room hits her where she's hot and sensitive.

Normally, she'd try to draw it out, make it last, but with his face behind her eyes — his _ little _ face, she remembers with a giggle — and the heated, flushed sense memory of how he'd scolded her in front of the entire lecture, it only takes a few moments before she's shuddering and gasping a wordless sigh of relief.

 

* * *

 

October comes to Western Massachusetts with an overnight cold snap, shocking the leaves on the trees into brilliant, varied shades of gold, orange, and deep crimson. Sansa wakes up chilly in her single room, yawning awake at nine in the morning, and leaves Goodrich House with no particular destination in mind. It’s a Sunday, and she has few plans for the day, even with midterms bearing down upon her. Studying seems like a waste of a perfectly beautiful, crisp autumn day. Instead, she puts on a thick red sweater and jeans, slings her satchel over her shoulder, and leaves without a single look at the pile of economics and poli sci textbooks that sit heavy on her desk.   
  
Dining hall food feels uninspiring. She makes a beeline instead for her car, and drives downtown to a coffee shop she knew to be reliable. Despite the exhilarating crispness of the air and the stunning foliage surrounding her, something feels off. She’s nervous, somehow, or perhaps just discontent. She brushes her hair out of her face and smiles graciously at the barista as she asks for the last caramelized pear tart in the case, but barely tastes it as she eats.    
  
Stupid. This whole feeling, this strange internalized pity party over nothing, the hollow emptiness that fills her body to capacity in the absence of immediate distractions, going on almost four years now. It’s all so stupid.   
  
She finds herself wandering down the street, sipping her latte and staring at nothing in particular. Water Street Books is open, and she slips inside, hesitates over the fiction tables and picks up a light-looking novel, a popcorn book with a jeweled stiletto on the jacket, from the half-price section before wandering back to nonfiction. Humming along with the song still stuck in her head, she skims titles and authors in the political science and current events aisles. She’s pondering a few older Richard Wolff titles when she takes half a step back and knocks into another solid body.   
  
“Sorry, sorry!” She turns. It’s — oh, for Christ’s sake. “Oh. Hi, Professor Baelish.”   
  
Baelish gives her a half smile, an interested little nod. “Ms. Stark. It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?”   
  
“Mm.” She nods, sliding her finger along the stacks and tapping at it thoughtfully. “Have you read this?”   
  
Baelish tilts his head to the side to read the title. “ _ Capitalism Hits the Fan _ ? No, I can’t say I have,” he smiles. “Are you a fan of Wolff?”   
  
“I forgot you don’t like him,” Sansa lies with a teasing smile of her own. “You neoliberals.”   
  
“Young lady, when you’ve been alive for more than a quarter century, you can start criticizing neoliberalism,” Baelish says. He takes the book from the shelf, flips through it. “I don’t dislike Wolff, though we disagree on nearly every subjective issue of substance. Are you going to buy this?”   
  
“Oh, I don’t know,” Sansa waffles. She hadn’t really intended on it, but Baelish gives her an odd little look and shrugs.   
  
“Well, I will,” he says, “and I’ll lend it to you.”   
  
“That’s not necessary,” she says, but he shakes his head.   
  
“I’m interested to hear your take on it,” he says with a little smile, and begins walking toward the front of the shop. “Think of it as an opportunity to earn some extra credit.”   
  
Something fizzes through her at that, like dropping a tablet of Alka-Seltzer into the still waters of her desire. It burns like a newly opened can of seltzer, the fierce itch of  _ wanting more _ overwhelming her. “Okay,” she says uncertainly, and then laughs a little to herself. “Are you going to quiz me on it?”   
  
He looks at her from the corner of his eye. “I plan on it. You can start by defining neoliberalism, and telling me what you’ve got against it.”   
  
Sansa blinks a little, thinking hard.  She knows the answer to this, just not in a straight, linear fashion; she needs to think out loud before she can put it all together... “Well, it’s essentially the concept that produced trickle-down economics, it came from Reagan,” she says, practically stalling as she tries to piece the words together from what she remembers of her more introductory classes.   
  
“Not quite right,” Baelish says immediately, and shakes his head, giving her a wry smile that makes her jolt. “Read your texts, Miss Stark. Pay closer attention.” He sets the book down on the counter, paying little attention to the shop clerk, and pays cash as Sansa watches, scratching at an itch on her calf through her tights with the toe of her boots. “That’ll be meeting number one.”   
  
“You’re really going to give me extra credit for reading this book,” she says, in slight disbelief as he hands her the flat paper bag with the paperback tucked safely inside. But Baelish just chuckles, shrugs and slides his own hands into the pockets of his jacket.   
  
“Truth be told, I doubt you need it,” he says. “Your quiz grades have all been very good. But your participation in class has been… lacking.”   
  
( _ Because I’ve spent the last three sessions thinking about you doing terrible things to me _ , she thinks, but doesn’t say.)   
  
“Oh,” she says instead, “well, I didn’t — I’m sorry. I’ll speak up more, then.”   
  
He waves it off. “Don’t worry. I’m happy to make up the ten points or so, just between us. Let’s call it our little book club.”   
  
Sansa takes a hesitant breath, and then exhales, nodding and smiling as they step back out into the bright sunlight. The bell on the shop dings as the door swings shut behind them. “I look forward to it,” she says. Not a lie. “Next week?”   
  
“How about at the end of my office hours on Thursday?” Baelish says, and she nods immediately.    
  
“Thursday,” she says. “Okay. I — thank you.”   
  
He shakes his head. “Don’t mention it, Miss Stark. I… I look forward to seeing more of you.”   
  
( _ Same _ , she thinks.)   
  
“I’ll see you in class, then,” she says instead, and she can’t shake the feeling, again, that he’s watching her leave in a way that suggests something more. Something like a deeper interest. Something she wants, in a stomach-turning, rotten-meat way, to be real.   
  


* * *

  
When  Tuesday rolls around again, she dresses carefully for Baelish's lecture, suddenly overtaken by the desire to impress. The crisp autumn weather necessitates layers, but she chooses them carefully: tights, a clingy sweater vest, chunky heeled boots that render her taller than he is. Sansa pauses in front of the mirror, and looks herself over critically. Almost there. She yanks the dress back over her head and takes off her bra, before pulling the dress back on. 

Checks the time. Shit. She's going to be late again.

When she slips into the classroom, she mouths a dramatic  _ I'm sorry _ to Baelish, who pauses again in his lecture to watch her descend the stadium-seating steps to an empty seat in front. He looks droll, perhaps even amused, by her lateness, and she flashes him a smile as she sits and shimmies out of her field jacket.

"Miss Stark," he says wryly. "No Starbucks today, I see."

"I didn't want to be late," she says sweetly, and she watches him hold back a slight smile at this.

"If you're going to be late to my class, the least you could do is bring me a coffee," Baelish says, and she knows he's kidding but at the same time — the idea isn't without its appeal... Sansa nods, smiles serenely, and opens her laptop with what she knows is a palpable air of self-satisfaction. His eyes linger on her for a moment more before he turns back to his lecture.

At the break, she edges up to his lectern and places the Wolff book in front of him gingerly. "This belongs to you, I believe," she says, and he cocks a brow as he looks back at her.

"Finished already?" He looks hesitantly impressed.

Sansa shrugs. She throws her shoulders back, bold despite herself. "I got caught up in it," she says, trying to sound humble and properly bashful. If she knows him as well as she thinks — he'll go for this, the good-bookish-girl act. "It's actually why I was late today, I just... I lost track of time in the afternoon."

Baelish picks up the book, smacking it against his other palm with a soft paperback _ thwack _ . A shiver runs through her, one he couldn't have quite meant to produce with such an absentminded gesture. Her eyes, she realizes a second too late, are locked on his hands. She looks back up, and sees something else in his searching, curious gaze.

"Good girl," he says mildly. "We'll talk about it on Thursday, then. 8 pm?"

She lingers on her way out of the lecture hall again, but he's deep in conversation over a contested quiz grade. He doesn't notice.

 

* * *

 

When she arrives at his office on Thursday evening, just four doors down from the econ department office itself, it's with a cup of steaming black coffee — not from the dining hall, but from the coffee shop just off the campus itself. She knocks on his door, and when he opens, she holds it up with a sly smile.

"I wasn't sure whether I would be late," she says, "and I wanted to cover all my bases."

Baelish looks at her in vague disbelief, but takes the cup eagerly. "Come in, come in," he murmurs, and shuts the door behind them as she takes a seat on the couch across from his desk. Everything in his office is warm and dark, and looks like it's been here for a decade at the very least; the furniture all looks as though it dates back to the 1970s. The couch itself must be older than either of them. She removes her coat and tucks her feet up underneath her as she makes herself comfortable.

(She'd neglected to put on a bra under her blouse again, but she's begun to find it more comfortable to just forgo it altogether.)

Baelish returns to his seat, sets down the coffee cup on his desk and swivels back to face her. He looks as warm and comfortable as the rest of his office, in a dark wool sweater, salt-and-pepper hair curling softly off his forehead. Sansa shifts a little bit on the couch as he rolls the chair a few inches toward her, then stops.

"So," he says. "Is it cold out? You... look cold."

Sansa rubs at her nose, her cheeks with both palms. "It's pretty cold," she admits. "Am I still flushed?"

"You're very pink. Don't worry, the radiator in here can be a bit overzealous, you'll warm up soon enough," Baelish laughs. "How are the rest of your classes going? You are an econ major, aren't you?"

"Double major," she nods, "with political science."

"I'll admit, that surprises me," he says, and off her look of confusion, adds, "you don't seem like the type. My field draws a certain type — male, mostly, with a bit of a pedantic attitude — but then again, times are changing..."

"Mm." She decides to let this go, bristling at the broad-strokes sexism of it nonetheless. "My other classes are fine..."

"Just fine?" he asks, and she shrugs.

"I like yours the best," she says, playing it safe, and he grants her a knowing little smile from the side of his mouth. There's a quiet moment between them, one that feels more suggestive than not, and Sansa quickly clears her throat as they both recover from it.

"And what do you plan to do with your degrees?" he asks, all business again. "Grad school?"

Sansa nods. "I haven't decided where yet. Maybe law school. We'll see."

"We shall indeed." Baelish picks up the book from his desk and smacks it against his palm again, and this time Sansa grinds her molars, unable to look away from it. He must know what he's doing — there's no way he can't — and she tries not to shift in her seated position in a way that might give away the new ache between her legs. "Now, I've got to say, I'm surprised you made it through this so quickly. I hope you didn't neglect any of your other work in its favor."

She shrugs, thinking about it. "Not really. I read quickly. When I'm engaged in something, I'm even faster."

"And you found this engaging?" Baelish opens the book, flipping through the pages idly. "What was more interesting about it, to you?"

"Well, my mother is in finance," Sansa says slowly. "She works for Goldman Sachs, and, you know, the economic crisis really shaped my childhood and adolescence... Wolff's perspective on what caused it, you know. He says near the beginning he prefers not to call it the 'financial crisis,' and goes back to it having been caused by American exceptionalism at its root, which I find interesting, the broad-strokes philosophy in comparison to the very finite, detail-oriented understanding I had before reading it." She pauses in her dissertation to take a breath, lick her chapped lips. She half expects Baelish to interrupt her, but he doesn't; just watches her, nodding softly, waiting for more. "You know, I understood that the crisis happened because banks gave mortages to people who would barely qualify for jury duty and sold them along with unregulated credit default swaps, but I guess I didn't see the bigger picture, you know, why it actually happened. Which is what he's trying to get across here? That consumerism as an American value dates all the way back to the Gilded Age, but wages haven't risen in accordance with the housing market since the 1970s, and at a certain point this was just..." She waves a vague hand through the air. "Bound to happen."

Baelish is still nodding, hasn't stopped nodding since the beginning of her rambling explanation. "This is good," he nods. "Although I disagree with Wolff's fundamental point here, that greater regulation on banks would have somehow led us to avoid the crisis in the first place. If the crisis sprung from wage disparity at its core, the problem of people buying houses they couldn't afford would have created that bubble regardless of regulation — credit default swaps might have been replaced with another form of bond, another sort of betting on American credit."

"But that's not fair!" Sansa says, indignant despite herself. She uncrosses her legs, sitting up and leaning forward. "You can't just say it was  _ bound _ to happen. That doesn't account for the morality of the whole situation. The crisis happened because bankers chose to gamble on real people's lives and jobs and credit —"

"Such as is their right within a free market," Baelish shrugs, and Sansa groans.

"That's what I'm saying. I agree with Wolff. They shouldn't have been allowed to."

"Unfortunately, Miss Stark," Baelish says, smug and self-satisfied as he leans back in his swivel chair, " _ should _ and  _ shouldn't  _ are not viable arguments here. On a moral level, do I agree that it's wrong? Perhaps. But perhaps not. After all, shouldn't you or I be held responsible to understand the terms of our mortgages and understand how our credit works?"

" _ We're _ not normal people," Sansa shoots back. "The banks should have made certain that people knew what they were signing before they allowed them to sign."

"And would it not be discriminatory to deny a mortgage to someone who had the money, but not the education to comprehend the technical terms of the mortgage they were taking out?" Baelish shakes his head. "Regulation isn't a panacea, Miss Stark. You have to let the market work these things out on its own."

Sansa closes her eyes, exhaling in frustration. She hears Baelish laugh a little and opens them again. "By the way," he adds gently. "You might like to know, your blouse is buttoned wrong."

Sansa looks down at her front; it _ is _ , and not even on purpose. "I'm so sorry," she says, her hands going to the buttons automatically. "I don't mean to look sloppy."

"You could never look sloppy," Baelish says warmly.

"Want to bet?" The words come out, again, without her express approval, and he gives her an odd little look, evidently taken aback, before she blushes furiously and he picks up the coffee he brought her, taking a long sip. She starts to fix her blouse, then remembers, in an instant, that she's bare underneath and thinks better of it. Perhaps she'll excuse herself to the women's room.

"Next week," Baelish says, "I think I'd like to talk to you about Wolff's views on reregulation."

"He doesn't think it'll work," Sansa says immediately. "And I'm inclined to agree with him, particularly in this political climate. It's been so impossible to pass any fiscal policy of substance since 2008 —"

Baelish holds up a hand. "Next week," he says firmly, and hands her the book again. "Go over it. Underline a few passages. I want an airtight argument, Sansa, not just more rhetoric. Be better than that. I know you can be."

Her face flushes again, but she can't help the furious throbbing between her legs at the harshness of his critique. He says it in such a caring tone, so much that she can't help but feel it's for her own good. "Yes, sir," she murmurs, and then lifts her chin.

"And Sansa?" he says, and she looks at him expectantly. "If you're late to my class on Tuesday... I prefer a splash of almond milk in my coffee."

Sansa licks her lips, nods. "Noted," she says. "Though beggars can't be choosers..."

"Perhaps not," Baelish says with eyes gleaming. "But your grade is still in my hands. Be on time, Miss Stark."

"I'll try," she says.

(I _ won't _ , she thinks.)  
  
  


* * *

 

It's the weekend of the Apple Festival, and she dutifully puts on her boots and scarf and trudges downtown with the student hordes. Jeyne meets the three of them in line for spiced cider, looking hung over with last night's makeup still smeared under her eyes.

"Don't give me that look," she says preemptively to Sansa. "I went a little harder last night than necessary, okay? It's not — I'm fine."

"No one said anything," Sansa says decisively, sipping her cider. "Do you need to hydrate? You might want to stick to something with electrolytes."

"Don't. I've been queasy all day." Jeyne sniffs at the cider Margaery hands her, then makes a face. "I had a good time, though..."

"Who did you hook up with?" Sansa asks, her curiosity getting the better of her, but with the slightest, tautest look in Asha's direction, Jeyne shakes her head.

"None of your business. Don't worry about it." She pushes the cider back into Margaery's hand. "You drink this, I can't. I'm gonna find a water bottle or something."

"What about you?" Margaery asks quietly, as the four of them walk on down the road. "Didn't you get that bartender's number the other week?"

"That was Jeyne," Sansa says, and Margaery sighs.

"Right. Well, I thought there was someone. Am I wrong?"

Sansa's jaw clicks as she opens her mouth to answer. "No, there's nobody," she says much too quickly. "I'm happier on my own, why doesn't anyone ever seem to grasp that?"

"Because, with all due respect, Sansa," Margaery says lightly, "you seem very tense. You need to get laid."

"I'll pass," Sansa says firmly. "Not very romantic."

"Suit yourself," says Margaery after a moment, tossing her hair out of her heart-shaped face. "But you should take my advice. Go out and get some — whatever it is you like, I can never really be certain —"

"Men," Sansa says, a little indignant, and Margaery giggles.

"Whatever," she says. Waves her cup of cider whimsically in front of her. "I just want you to be happy."

"And I am happy. Very much so. Alone," she says firmly.

"Sure."

They duck in and out of the shops on Water Street, the bustle of the street fair behind them. The air smells refreshingly like dirt and dead leaves, the hazy afternoon sunlight turning gold as it filters through the red and yellow leaves above them — it's more than idyllic, Sansa thinks, even if it makes her a bit nostalgic for home, and the city. She ducks into the bookshop and picks out a new Wolff title — all the better to one-up Baelish with next week. With the package tucked neatly under her arm, Sansa rejoins the other girls outside, and — oh, hell, not again.

"Professor Baelish," she says quietly. "You're not — hi."

Baelish turns to her with a knowing smile. "Miss Stark. We keep meeting," he says, inclining his head. "I was just catching up with Asha and Margaery — they took my econometrics course last fall..."

"Of course," Sansa says, her stomach flip-flopping. Her brown leather satchel is just a bit too small to hide the new book in. She settles for concealing it behind her back, but he cocks a brow, looks at the bag.

"More Wolff, I presume?"

Sansa sighs, opens the bag enough to display the title on the spine. "Just, you know. For when I've got some spare time."

Baelish laughs, his breath making a cloud in the crisp air. "Very clever of you. The work ethic on this one —" He jerks his head at Sansa, addressing the other girls. "She's got a thirst, hasn't she?"

Sansa licks her lips. She realizes, just then, that she's let her mouth hang open this whole time.

"Thirsty," Asha observes. "Yep. That's right."

Baelish chuckles with the air of a man who knows he's not in on a joke. He squeezes Sansa's shoulder. "I'll see you in class Tuesday," he says, and to the others, "Asha, Margaery, it was nice to see you ladies."

He's halfway down the street before Margaery turns to her with both eyebrows lifted in disbelief. "Baelish?" she asks, her tone flat, and Sansa groans.

"Look, I don't know what you think is going on, but Baelish and I are not — he's not — I don't feel that way about him."

"Relax, Sansa," Asha says breezily. "Like I said, we've all thought about it."

"I certainly haven't!" Margaery says. "He's so creepy. Sansa, that was  _ creepy _ ."

"Was it?" Sansa frowns, then shakes her head. "I mean, no. Look, I'm not into him." (Lies.) "He just gives me really good feedback about books I'm reading, and tells me whether I'm comprehending them. It's not like that."

Asha chuckles again, but Jeyne and Margery look unconvinced. "If you say so," Margaery says, but she's still frowning.

Sansa sighs.

Her pulse hasn't stopped hammering since he touched her shoulder.

 

* * *

  
  
The days have grown shorter since the game began, and Sansa's painstakingly rendered script in her day planner has grown thicker and more densely packed among the too-small squares. The air gets colder as October flies by, and each week, she meets with Baelish in his dark, warm office at eight  on Thursday . On the other days, she studies; she goes out, agreeably, with the girls, but comes up with polite reasons not to pursue the guys who ask for her number or hover at the end of the night.

"I'm very busy," she tells one of them. "It's nothing personal. I'm just afraid I don't have the time."

They don't give her much trouble; gone are the days when she would freely associate with the type of boy who might throw a tantrum or accuse her of leading them on. But she doesn't necessarily like to disclose the real reason, that her interest in Baelish has grown from a passing curiosity to an all-consuming, treacherous ache. For every reason to drop it, to forget about him and be sensible, there's an equal throb of obsession somewhere deep and ugly inside her. The wanting is like an octopus, wrapping its long tentacles around her superego and throttling it until it gives in.

It's not even necessarily that he's nice to her. He's  _ nicer _ , certainly, but even his praise is cut with equal amounts of critique, pressing her to dig a little deeper into the subject or make her arguments stronger. The criticism is what makes that pulse go off. Each "try harder" makes her  _ try harder _ . It occurs to her, in one idle moment, that this is perhaps an undignified position, scrabbling for bits of praise and flushing each time she's denied. But it doesn't particularly matter, somehow. She likes it anyway.

Midterms are a reckoning. They pass in a flurry of last-minute studying, reading over notes outside classrooms and furious memorization. On the day of Baelish's, she shows up to class on time — perhaps a bit early — but brings him coffee nonetheless, cutting him a sweet smile as she takes her now-regular seat in the second row.

"How thoughtful," Baelish says as he takes a sip. "Although I do have to ask — you realize you're  _ on time _ today, right?"

Sansa shrugs breezily as she shrugs off her coat. "I figured you've grown accustomed to the midafternoon caffeine bump," she says, and Baelish laughs, not even bothering to tear his eyes away from her chest. Her nipples, she realizes, are hard under her white cashmere sweater. She wants to be embarrassed, but it sends another, different kind of thrill through her instead — it's as if there's no one else in the lecture hall, just them, a private show. Nobody seems to be paying attention to their moment of banter anyway. Nobody notices.

Baelish smiles, and he takes another long sip from the paper cup she handed him, and she thrills a little inside.

He passes out the exam, and she applies herself to it eagerly, writing her name in soft, swooping script at the top. The zero in the date, she turns into a heart — a girlish affectation she senses he might find either irritatingly twee or daringly feminine, a 50-50 chance she's willing to risk. Midway through the exam, she hears the air conditioner kick on in the room, and looks up to see him at the thermostat, idly fiddling with the buttons. His eyes flit over to meet hers, and there's something dark and probing about his gaze, something that makes her feel both exposed and exhilarated.

Sansa glances down at her chest again, then leans back in her desk, arching her back up as she feigns a stretch.

From the corner of her eye, where she's determinedly not looking at him, she sees him smile.

 

* * *

  
  


"Miss Stark. Come in."

"It's a nice night, isn't it?" Sansa modulates her voice as much as possible as Baelish shuts the door behind them. She'd walked from Goodrichl, taking in the mild air fuzzy with fog and the scent of muddy wet leaves on the ground. The kind of hazy fall night that felt almost insulated with humidity, no breeze or bite to the air to make it feel unpleasant. She'd brought an umbrella, just in case. Her hair, she could tell, had curled a little in the damp-velvet night.

Baelish sat back down at his desk, holding out his hand for the copy of Wolff's book. Sansa set down her bag on the sofa, bending over to rifle through it. Bending at the waist. She can feel his eyes on her bare legs, and thanks God it wasn't too cold to get away with not wearing tights.

"It's unseasonably warm," Baelish agrees. "There's a storm coming in, though, and probably a cold snap after that."

"Mm." Sansa brushes her hair out of her face as she turns back to face him, handing him the paperback and sitting down on the couch with a thump. "I love thunderstorms, don't you? They're so atmospheric. Romantic. Very _Wuthering Heights_ , you know."

Baelish clicks his tongue. "The rain can be inconvenient..."

"I love the rain," she confesses. "I think the inconveniences are worth it. This is my favorite time of year. The weather, the leaves, the food... fall fruits, really, are so much better than summer ones if you ask me."

With a small, disbelieving laugh, Baelish shakes his head and opens a desk drawer. "It's funny you would say that," he says. From the drawer, he removes a pomegranate, about the size of both Sansa's fists clenched together. "A colleague brought me this from the farmer's market. Do you like them?"

Sansa lifts both eyebrows, nodding eagerly. "My favorite, actually," she says. (A half lie. Tied with pears, they're her favorite.) And she watches with hungry eyes as Baelish digs both hands into the fruit and tears it in half, watches it separate neatly, revealing a bloody core of seeds. He offers her one half, and Sansa, after a hesitant moment, accepts it.

"Well, then," she says as she looks it over. Plucks a single seed from the middle and pops it into her mouth. It bursts, tart and juicy, between her teeth as Baelish watches.

"Where are you from, again, Sansa?" Baelish leans back in his seat, placing his half of the pomegranate on the desk beside the book. He does not move to open the paperback, and Sansa eats another seed and thinks that she doesn't particularly mind.

"I'm from New York," she says. "Well. Westchester. I grew up in Rye."

"And you went to school there?"

"Rye Country Day," she nods.

"And you liked it?"

"It was fine," Sansa says slowly. "You know. My little sister goes to boarding school, and I was always very jealous of that. She has — learning disabilities. Behavior problems. All of the above. But my brothers and I all have gone to RCD. I'm sure the teachers there are more than sick of the Stark kids now."

Baelish chuckles. He's spinning softly in his chair, from side to side. "And did you always have such a problem with punctuality? Or is that a recent development?"

"Oh, always," Sansa laughs. "Ask anyone, I'm incorrigible."

"That you are." His eyes land on her long, bare legs again, and Sansa, feeling a shiver of boldness, unfolds them and stretches out along the couch, letting her black Chelsea boots hang off the end. Her plain black dress might have been modest on a more petite girl. On her, the hemline feels downright dangerous. Sansa stretches out on the couch, feeling a bit like she's back at her therapist's office in Rye; she studies the pomegranate carefully, then pops a few more seeds into her mouth, breaking their delicate flesh between her molars. "Make yourself comfortable," he adds wryly, "by all means."

Sansa smiles politely. "Are we going to talk about Wolff?"

"Would you prefer to talk about Wolff?"

"Not really," she confesses, and he laughs.

"Tell me about your family," he says instead. "A sister, brothers, what else?"

"Two older brothers — well, a half-brother and a real one — both 23," Sansa says. "Two younger. Bran's 14, Rick's 10. Arya's 17. She's a senior at the Kildonan School."

"And your parents? You said your mother works in finance?" His voice is mild with curiosity, and Sansa closes her eyes slowly before she rips off the bandage.

"My mother works in finance, yes," she says quietly. "My father — he passed away a few years ago."

"Oh," says Baelish. Solemn, somber. He sounds sorry. "I apologize. We don't have to —"

"No, I don't mind talking about it," she presses. Because she doesn't, now, not really. It's gotten easier, the more she's forced herself to do it. "I was sixteen when it happened. It was a car accident. I..." And here she pauses, because this is the part that always hurts. "I called him to pick me up one night, and a deer ran right in front of his car on the way. It was..."

She swallows. _It was my fault_ , she wants to say; _I was drunk, I couldn't drive myself home, I made a stupid decision and I let a boy tell me what to do and I was scared and my father died because of me_. She doesn't say any of that. She shakes her head. "It could have happened to anyone," she says instead. "But it happened to him."

Baelish is quiet, still. "I'm so sorry," he says, and he sounds it. Sansa shakes her eat, eats another few pomegranate seeds.

"Don't be," she says firmly. "It was three years ago. I — it's not... I don't know." She shakes her head, shutting her eyes. She doesn't cry about it anymore. Only on holidays, really. She hears him sigh, feels the heaviness descending over the room, and wishes, desperately, to talk about anything else. "Anyway," she says, opening her eyes and feigning indifference, "I consider myself lucky. I think I got off fairly lightly, in terms of psychological damage." Laughs lightly. Dead Dad Kid. She can say this.

Baelish cocks a brow. "You seem well-enough adjusted."

"Well enough?" She shakes her head, gives him a playfully reproachful look. "What does that mean?"

"I wouldn't know you well enough to say one way or the other, of course," he says. "But you have... a strikingly even keel. It's intriguing, I have to say."

"Oh?" Sansa sits back up, leaning forward. "Intriguing in what way? Can I ask?"

"Of course you may," says Baelish, leaning on the word  _ may _ just enough to make her flush a little. "Your brain, I have to say, is quite interesting. Swanlike, in a sense. You seem to know the value of politesse and keeping a straight face, but there's so much going on beneath the surface — I can just see you paddling furiously under that smile."

"Oh."

"Don't blush, it's not an insult."

"I didn't take it as one." Sansa breathes in steadily through her nose. "Are you... why are you so interested in me?"

Baelish doesn't answer that. He leans back in his seat again, and he pops two seeds of his half pomegranate into his mouth. Sansa looks down at her own hands, her fingertips stained that cool deep red as though she's dipped them into a vat of dye. When he speaks, it's not to answer the question. "Your father's death," he says. "Would you say that affected you in a concrete way?"

Sansa furrows her brow, and she looks at him with searching interest. "Are you asking how bad my daddy issues are?" she asks blankly, and she sees him swallow hard, and almost regrets her impudence. Almost.

"No," he says, but his voice is hollow, and she can tell in that moment that he meant to ask exactly that.

Sansa is hungry. There's a void inside her that every pomegranate in the world couldn't fill, a hunger that makes her want terrible things. It's the kind of hunger that comes from deep within, from a lifetime of holding back, from never asking for more than she is offered. Dutiful sex with half-interested boys, boys she can tell view romance as a series of transactional steps to gain entrance to her body — never has it occurred to her to ask for more. She desires everything, but would never ask. She is easily satisfied, duty-bound to politeness above all else.

The hunger, the void, a fire that cannot be quenched with water alone: it requires blood, and the blood can't be her own. She thinks she'd let this man do anything to her if it left her halfway sated.

"I think you're interesting, too," she says quietly. "Really. And I think it's interesting how you never quite ask what you mean to ask, but you get me to say what you want to hear anyway."

Baelish looks at her, his mouth twisted in a little half-smirk. Slowly, practically in reverse time, he moves his leather swivel chair closer and closer to her seat on the couch. "Why are you really here, Sansa?"

"To better understand your embrace of neoliberalism." Petulant. Teasing. She wonders what his skin smells like.

"Really. Don't lie to me." One of his elegant hands descends on the only safe part of her thigh, where the skin is still covered by her skirt. Sansa wills herself not to shiver; she remains perfectly still. Not asking for more. Not pushing back. Allowing.

"Why have you taken such an interest in me?" she asks again. "What do you see that I don't?"

Baelish doesn't move his hand — doesn't squeeze down or stroke her leg, just lets it rest there, deceptively heavy. He rakes his gaze up her body and back down. Stoking her hunger, the fire inside her. She  _ wants _ .

Sansa remains still, quiet, waiting for him to move. Slowly, painfully slowly, Baelish moves his chair an inch closer to her place on the couch, then two more. She can feel the heat of his palm radiating through the fabric of her dress, and the muscle of her thigh twitches, out of her control — he curls his fingers, digs them in a little deeper.   
  
She glances up. Meets his eyes.    
  
The knock on the door startles them both.   
  
“Professor Baelish?” Someone’s outside, rapping sharply, all knuckles on the thick wood. “I just had a question, I know your office hours are over, but —”   
  
Baelish jerks away, pulls his hand off her thigh like he’s been scalded. “Come in!” he calls at the door, and Sansa quickly puts her feet back down on the floor, crosses her ankles primly and smooths out her skirt. The door swings open, and a guy steps inside, someone she recognizes vaguely from another class — Hardyng, she remembers the last name, not his first. He’s muscular and athletic-looking, shaggy curls falling into his eyes. He eyes her warily as he slides into the office. Sansa offers a smile, then focuses her attention on the pomegranate in her lap, ripping out seeds and popping them into her mouth.   
  
“Harry. How can I help you?” Baelish is all business.   
  
“I was just wondering if you had my midterm graded yet — my counselor needs to review my academic standing, and —”   
  
“Right. Say no more.” Baelish rifles through a stack of exams on his desk before pulling out one with a harsh red 66% scrawled at the top. “Let me know if you need anything else.”   
  
“I — yeah.” Harry folds the exam in two and tucks it into his pocket. “Thanks. That’s all I needed. You don’t — you don’t give any extra credit, do you?”   
  
Baelish shakes his head. “I’m afraid not… you should speak to the department head. I believe there are free tutoring sessions held before finals.”   
  
“Little late.” Harry shrugs. “Thanks.” With another sidelong look at Sansa, still picking at her pomegranate, he ducks back out the door and shuts it heavily behind him. Sansa waits, expectant, but Baelish does not move closer to her again — just rifles through the papers again and takes out another.   
  
“In case you’re curious,” he says, and hands it to her. Her econometrics midterm. There’s a 98% written in red at the top.   
  
“Where did the two percent go?”    
  
“Your answer to the sixth question was correct, but you used a projection model when the question specified a homoskedastic regression model.” Baelish shrugs. “I had to dock points. It wouldn’t be fair.”   
  
Sansa sighs. “Fair enough.” She hands him back the exam. “You can give this to me in class on Tuesday. I don’t want to get it wet in the rain.”   
  
As Baelish sets it aside, she waits, again, in expectation. But the moment is gone — he’s no longer paying attention to her at all, and Sansa slowly stands, sets the pomegranate on his desk and puts on her jacket.    
  
“I’ll see you Tuesday,” she says quietly, and he nods.   
  
“Tuesday.”   


 

* * *

  
  
The weekend passes in a flash; Sansa buries herself in homework and reading as the weather outside worsens. Thunderstorms cede to the first real snow of the season, but it’s bitter and grey, not winter-white and pretty. She stays on campus and doesn’t go into town, dreading the potential for a run-in with Baelish at the coffee shop or the bookstore. But he barely looks at her on Tuesday, either, just passes back her midterm with a half-smile. She feigns excitement at the 98%, but stares balefully at the sixth question when he turns his back.   
  
She’s nervous. She’s scared. She’s made a terrible mistake, she thinks. She watches his shoulder blades move under his oxford as he turns to write out a function on the whiteboard, and she’s starving.   
  
By Thursday, most of the snow has melted, and the cold snap has finally induced the few remaining bright leaves to fall from the trees. It occurs to her, as she tucks herself into a table at the Pig on Thursday afternoon, textbooks and studying supplies spread out in front of her, that Thanksgiving is only a week away. Thank God, she thinks. She already looks forward to the drive home through Western Mass and upstate New York — stopping at Cousins or the Putnam Diner for lunch to delay her arrival, to stretch it out and make the day feel more like a true excursion. It has nothing to do with the mild fear of what state her family will be in when she arrives. Nothing at all.   
  
Sansa pulls her maple latte closer to her, opens one of her notebooks and begins a bulleted list of notes. She’d done very well on her American Government midterm, but the final was rumored to be twice as difficult, and Lannister never graded on a curve — irritating little man, she thought, so convinced of his own brilliance that he spent half of each lecture on rambling asides for the sake of hearing himself talk. But she loved the subject, the minute detail and strange, dramatic history of the United States government, spilling like bramble bushes full of thorns over the landscape of history.    
  
She’s halfway through summarizing her textbook’s chapter on food policy when a wave of rose perfume settles over the table. Sansa glances up just as Margaery, hair tumbling in soft waves over her fuzzy white coat, collapses into the chair opposite with a cup in hand.   
  
“Sansa,” she says dramatically. “Do you ever check the group text?”   
  
Sansa wrinkles her brow. “I’ve had my phone on Do Not Disturb all afternoon,” she says, gesturing to where it’s turned face-down beside her, rose gold metal showing through the clear floral case. “Why? Is it urgent?”   
  
“I mean, I guess it’s kind of urgent,” Margaery says. She pulls off her coat, drapes it over the back of her chair. Sansa can smell her chai latte from across the table. “We found out who Jeyne’s been sleeping with all semester.”   
  
“Hm?”   
  
“It’s Theon. Asha’s brother,” Margaery says gleefully. “And Asha’s _ pissed _ . Apparently Theon wanted to bring her home for Thanksgiving because things with her parents are, y’know, and he asked Asha if he could use the plane ticket their dad bought her because she might have to stay and work on Black Friday since she waited too long to request off, and Asha got all pissed off and said that she’s not going to give away her plane ticket to someone she’s never even met, and he said that they had met, and then…” Margaery laughs. “This is insane, right?”   
  
“Yeah. Wow.” Sansa tries to recall Asha’s brother’s face — they’d met a few times when they’d driven over to Amherst, where he was a sophomore at UMass. “That’s insane.”   
  
“Anyway, now Jeyne and Asha are fighting, and you’ll be expected to pick a side, I assume.” Margaery sips her latte, her impeccably-lined eyes rolling in defeat. “Jeyne’s being ridiculous. I’ve told her a million times, it’s chicks before dicks. Or chicks before dicks and other chicks. It’s an insult to friendship code to just start fucking your friend’s little brother without asking her first, especially when she’s already taken you under her wing, like Asha has Jeyne…”   
  
“It seems uncharacteristic for Jeyne, too,” Sansa agrees. “She’s such a snob, normally.”   
  
“Well, pot meet kettle, Sansa…” Margaery smirks, and then raises both eyebrows as Sansa gives her a blank, polite stare. “You know! You think you’re too good for all the guys I’ve introduced you to.”   
  
“I don’t,” Sansa protests.   
  
“There’s nothing wrong with that,” says Margaery. “Really. You’re focusing on yourself and your studies, that’s fine. You’ve got to love yourself first. That said, I really wish you’d just get out of your own head now and then.”   
  
“What do you mean by that?”   
  
“Speaking as a friend…” Margaery taps her blunt, glossy nails on the tabletop. “You’re uptight, all right?”   
  
Sansa feels her cheeks flush, hot and uncomfortable in the warmth of the coffee shop. “I’m not uptight,” she protests. She thinks about the Thursday prior, Baelish’s hand on her thigh in the heat of his office. “I’ve got admittedly high standards. But you have no idea how not-uptight I can be when someone meets them.”   
  
Margaery heaves a sigh. “Well, look, far be it from my place to press the issue,” she says. “But you’ve just been very quiet lately. You’re not yourself. Everyone’s noticed. I just think you would be better off if you made an effort to find someone who met your impossible standards, even if it’s just for a casual thing. Stop being such a good girl. You might find it liberating.”   
  
“Margaery…”   
  
“I’m dropping it, look, see?” Margaery dusts her hands together and holds them up theatrically. “End of conversation. That’s my two cents, for what they’re worth.”   
  
“I appreciate them.” Sansa turns over her phone, curious to read the events of the group chat by herself, but is shocked by the time that greets her - 7:59. “Oh, my God. Marge, I’m sorry, I have to go —”   
  
“Don’t call me Marge.”   
  
“Marge in Charge. I’ve got to go, sorry. I have a meeting with a professor.” Sansa sweeps her books into her bag, doesn’t even bother to finish her coffee. “I’ll talk to you about this later, okay? I’m so sorry!”   
  
Despite the sweat beading on her forehead from the pace of her run, it’s nearly ten after eight by the time she makes it up to Baelish’s office. She raps eagerly on the door, practically splitting her knuckles from the pace of it, and keeps knocking — stomach twisted into nervous knots — until, finally, it swings open.   
  
Baelish cocks a brow. His voice is cold when he speaks. “You’re very late.”   
  
“I know that.” She does. Her face burns. Fuck, either she’s overheated from running all the way here or she’s already blushing. Perhaps both. “I’m so sorry. I was held up by a friend.”   
  
“I shouldn’t let you in, you know,” he says. He doesn’t make any motion as to let her inside.    
  
“I know that, sir.”   
  
“I’ve lectured you about your lateness too many times, Sansa. You continue to let me down.”   
  
“Sir. Professor. I’m really sorry,” Sansa mumbles, forcing herself to meet his eyes. “I really meant to be on time tonight. I have been, you know, making an effort. I just — Margaery Tyrell, you know her, you know how she loves to talk, she wouldn’t let me go —”   
  
“Sansa…” He sighs heavily, and opens the door, just wide enough for her to pass. “What are we going to do with you?”   
  
Sansa drops her coat and heavy bag on the couch and spins around. He’s shutting the door, hard and heavy, and after a few searching, searing moments of eye contact, he spins the lock on the doorknob as well.   
  
She swallows, heart already pounding. “I don’t know,” she says, struggling to keep her voice steady and even. A tremble of excited fear wobbles into it at the end, and she feels herself flush again. “What do you mean?”   
  
“I mean your behavior around me,” says Baelish quietly. He doesn’t sit. He stands near the door, head slightly cocked, almost amused as he looks her over. “You’re constantly late. You flout my classroom rules. I say no food or drink allowed on the first day of class, you show up each week with coffee in hand — oh, I’m sure you didn’t know, you were late the first day as well..” Sansa bites her lip. She  _ was _ late the first day, but so was almost everyone else; the department had switched rooms for the class and not bothered to send out an email, just pasted a piece of paper on the door of the original lecture hall to inform anyone who showed up there… “You like to tease, don’t you? All those short skirts, all those blouses without a bra.”   
  
“You noticed,” she says quietly, and he laughs, low and rough.   
  
“I’d be blind not to,” he says, and the hunger in his voice nearly matches her own.   
  
“Professor…” She wants to say something, make an excuse for herself, even apologize, as is her nature. But Baelish shakes his head as a strange sort of confidence, pride, even, comes over her. So she  _ did _ know what he wanted. She read him, precisely, just as he read her.    
  
_ You’re so uptight _ , comes Margaery’s voice in her head, and she grits her teeth. A good girl, an uptight girl, wouldn’t be here. Margaery knows nothing about how good she can or can’t be.   
  
Baelish swallows. He unbuttons one of his shirt cuff buttons, then the other, and slowly begins to roll up his left sleeve, baring a solid few inches of forearm. She sees his adam’s apple bob in his throat as he looks at her, and she shivers. She’s game. Let’s play ball. She’ll do whatever he —   
  
“Bend over the desk,” he says quietly, and Sansa closes her eyes slowly, takes a shuddering breath.    
  
She moves toward the desk on unstable, shaky legs, and holds onto the edge of it as she bends forward. “All the way down,” Baelish instructs, “closer to the edge — nose to the wood. There. Good girl.” Sansa blinks quietly, tries to keep her breathing level. Her heeled booties thrust her hips up as she maneuvers herself into position. She feels Baelish step closer, feels his hands graze her hips, and once again the white heat of his palms seems to shock her through the fabric of her dress. She feels him press down on the small of her back, adjusting her posture very slightly, and her cunt throbs with want, aching and sharp and soaking wet already. If he wants to fuck her like this — over the desk, no kissing, no touching — he can have her. She feels as though she might come as soon as he enters her.   
  
“Lift up your dress for me,” he says, “and stay still.”   
  
She does. Her hands leave the edge of the desk and go to her skirt instead, moving on autopilot. She hikes up the grey wool of her shirtdress to her waist, and feels his warm hands slide beneath, to the waistband of her tights — gets his fingers under the elastic and tugs. Sansa shifts her hips just enough to help her out, but stops as he clutches her hip with one hand. “Still,” he says again, voice harsh and reproachful, and she doesn’t argue, simply obeys. He pulls her tights down slowly, all the way to her knees, and she bites down on her lower lip as he caresses her upper thighs with both palms. His hands slide up her legs, up over the seat of her underwear, and she’s trembling, eager for him to get on with it and  _ fuck her _ , when —   
  
The crack of his palm registers first, the sharp sound of it. Her eyes fly shut as the stinging pain follows. And then there’s an overwhelming pleasure, something she’s never felt before — it comes over her like a wave breaking on the sand, soaking her cunt as she struggles against her desire to move. She gasps as she feels it, and hears him laugh. And then he spanks her again, the other side of her ass over her simple cotton panties, and her hips buck against the desk.   
  
“What,” he says slowly, conversationally, “are we going to do with you, Sansa.”   
  
It’s not a question; it doesn’t beg a response. Sansa draws a shaky breath as she feels him draw his hand back again, and arches her back in anticipation. This time, the slap connects hard against her bottom, and she can’t help the little gasp it forces out of her, nor the one that follows as he smacks her again and again. All she can do is hold onto the fabric of her skirt, digging her feet into the ground to keep herself steady, the side of her face pressed hard against the cool wood of Baelish’s desk.   
  
It hurts. It hurts, and the position is undignified, and yet the warming sting on her skin makes her feel dirty and clean at the same time. The hunger inside her intensifies with each slap, and yet — she can feel something else coming over her.    
  
“Sansa,” Baelish says quietly as he toys with the waistband of her underwear. “What does Wolff say about reregulation?”   
  
Sansa takes a deep breath as she feels him begin to slide them down. When they’ve joined her tights, bunched up at her knees, his breath ghosts over her bare bottom, and she shivers again. She thinks — hopes — it might be over, and opens her mouth to answer. “Reregulation,” she says shakily. “He doesn’t think it’ll work because regulation was a success under Roosevelt and under a working class that thought very differently about the idea of regulation than today’s does.”   
  
“Almost.” And there’s another slap, this time much harder than the ones before, over her bare ass. Sansa squeaks, bunches up her dress in her hands as she struggles to stay upright over the desk. Baelish rubs his hand over her warm skin, slowly, with nearly unbelievable amounts of affection. “How does the matter of debt play into this? Be specific.”   
  
“I — debt was substituted for rising wages, and that’s indicative of a fundamental disconnect between the people who set wages in our society and the people who work for them.” She grits her teeth in anticipation of the next blow, and it hurts. The pain is the lightning, and the pleasure rolls across her like thunder, seconds later. Christ, this feels good. Baelish spanks her, again and again, as she thrusts her hips and her ass up higher, for his benefit — for his consumption, really. Uptight? She’s never felt less uptight in her life.   
  
“Good.” His voice is steady, even despite her obvious desire. “You realize why I’ve got to do this, don’t you? I need to know that you’re learning. I’d be a fool to assume that rapt attention you pay in class has anything to do with my good looks —”   
  
“It does,” Sansa says petulantly, “and you don’t even teach Wolff.”   
  
Baelish laughs. Low and harsh and almost delighted. His fingers dance along the seam of her sex, and she struggles to spread her legs wider, constrained by her tights but desperate to allow him passage — but he doesn’t even dip them inside, just strokes softly along the soaking-wet outer edge of her lips. “That’s ten more,” he murmurs. “Count them, Miss Stark.”   
  
The first and second land along her upper thighs, and she forces out a “One, two” in a hushed voice. He runs his hand over the hot skin there, and she can hear him almost laughing.   
  
“While I disagree with Wolff’s intent, I find that his arguments against regulation make perfect, innate sense,” he says. He traces another line across her ass, and smacks her again, two hard blows in perfect unison.   
  
“Three,” Sansa gasps. And then, “Four.”   
  
“He aspires to an economic climate similar to that of the postwar era,” says Baelish, and her cunt aches, needy, desperate to be filled — she bucks against his hand as he strokes the globes of her ass, soft and possessive.    
  
“Five,” she says as the fifth lands, dead center. “Six — seven, eight!” She’s on fire, and then his fingers are back at her dripping sex — his hands are  _ everywhere _ , palming her ass cheeks and spreading her open with idle interest. Her face burns; exposed and squirming, clenching her soaked inner thighs together in desperate want of the relief of friction. Her eyes slide shut again, her face so warm it feels as though she’s about to overheat. He pulls his hands away, and her body tenses for the final blows, but they don’t come. Instead, one able hand slides into her hair, and he threads it through her long auburn strands to pull her face up off the desk. “Will you be late again?” he asks, and she blinks with tear-stained eyes — she barely knew she was crying.   
  
“No,” she says. ( _ Yes, if it means you’ll do this again _ , she thinks.)   
  
“I don’t believe you,” he says. His hand tightens in her hair. “You’re a terrible liar, Miss Stark.”   
  
Nine and ten are intense, forcing one long, strangled cry from her lips — he doesn’t wait for her to count them, simply drops his hands and pulls her underwear back up over her burning skin. Baelish yanks at her tights, pulls them up over her hips as well, and they’re tangled and uncomfortable but Sansa doesn’t bother to adjust them, simply stands and smooths out the skirt of her desk. She can feel the tears still clouding her eyes, and swipes her thumbs over the places where she can feel her mascara starting to run.    
  
“Next week,” says Baelish, as he rubs at the palm of his right hand with the thumb and forefinger of his left, “don’t be late.”    
  
“Next week is Thanksgiving,” she can’t resist correcting him, and Baelish looks at her in droll disbelief. She can see his erection tenting his pants; she wonders how he can be so calm under the circumstances.   
  
“So it is,” he says. He turns to his bookshelf and takes down another book, a slim paperback. He hands it to her. “Read this over break,” he says coolly, “and be prepared to talk about it.”   
  
“I’ve got other classes,” she says. “And finals are coming up.” But she shrinks under his stare, the icy-warm heat of it.    
  
“Read the book,” he says quietly. She takes it in her hands, runs her thumb down the spine:  _ The Economic Institutions of Capitalism _ . Williamson. “This is required reading in my seminar,” he adds. “Read it now. You’ll be ahead of the curve.”   
  
“Okay.” She bites down on her lower lip, waiting for more, but Baelish just moves back to his desk and sits down, heavily, in his chair. “Thank you, Professor Baelish.”   
  
He looks up at her with a sigh and shakes his head. “You’re dismissed,” he murmurs.   
  
The walk back to her dorm seems endless, but when she makes it through the door, it’s only moments before she’s pressed up back against it, thrusting her fingers beneath her tights and underwear, rubbing herself off furiously with her stinging skin burning beneath her clothes. She’s over the edge in a second, gasping his name, and slides down the wall to the floor when her legs, finally, give out.   
  


* * *

  
  
She skips class on Tuesday. On some level, she’s certain he’ll notice — that there will be retribution — but half the school doesn’t bother showing up the day before break, anyway. Sansa, instead, busies herself packing for the holiday. Midway through the afternoon, she takes a break, and wanders down to the dining hall for a meal.   
  
On Wednesday, she pulls her 3 Series out onto the Taconic and heads south. It occurs to her that, over the past year, she’s come to like driving again. There’s no radio reception out here, for most of the drive, at least, but she’ll make do with what’s on her phone — hooks it up and queues up something soft and quiet. Sips her coffee; feels the gears shift. Thinks about Baelish.   
  
It’s terrifying to her how much she enjoyed — that. The wanting, the aching, hasn’t subsided in the least. And perhaps she thought, on some higher level, that once he inevitably acted upon whatever that was between them, that she wouldn’t want it at all. It’s happened before, crushes fizzling out as soon as the potential energy goes kinetic. The daydream, she’s found, has always been more appealing than the reality. (And not to mention the damned ethics of it all, either; oddly, that’s the part that sticks in her craw less than the rest.)   
  
Yes, it was wrong. Yes, she’s treading a path treacherously close to the edge. But on the other hand — isn’t it mutually assured destruction, a bit? Wouldn’t he be ruined if she so much as told the dean of students? Isn’t this a form of power, in its own strange way?   
  
(And then there’s the matter of his hands; how badly she wants them all over herself, how it scares and excites her just to imagine a repeat performance.)   
  
There’s blood in her mouth from the way she’s been chewing on her cheek since it happened. She pokes her tongue into the sore spot, exploring, unable to stay away. She keeps doing that. She keeps pressing on it.   
  


* * *

  
  
When she pulls into the driveway, she notices the garage is already full: Jon’s weather-beaten Bronco is parked outside at the curb, and she wonders about that. He doesn’t normally bother, around the holidays. Not since their father passed. Sansa parks behind Robb’s sleek Mercedes and glances up and down the street. Not a neighbor in sight. Good, she thinks; she doesn’t like the idea of making polite conversation today.   
  
The noise nearly overwhelms her as she slips through the door, kicking off her duck boots in the foyer. The TV’s on in the living room, she can hear Bran and Rick playing video games. Things are, it seems, nearly as they always were. She takes her time picking her way to the kitchen. Treading lightly. Disturbing the air as little as possible.   
  
“Hey, Mom,” she says quietly, leaning on the doorjamb next to the fridge, and her mother turns on her heel to envelope her in a tight hug.   
  
“Sansa, honey.” Her mother smells like she always has, like Guerlain L’Heure Bleue and warm cashmere. Sansa takes a deep, steadying breath before pulling away, and Cat Stark smiles, squeezing her shoulder.   
  
“Are you hungry?” she asks. “You look so thin, sweetheart. Have you been eating enough?”   
  
Sansa shrugs. “I had lunch at the diner on the way,” she says. “You know. Dining hall food is so terrible for you. I’ve been making do.”   
  
Cat shakes her head, opens the fridge. “Have a yogurt, at least. There’s fresh fruit. Oh, look —” and she turns back to the counter, rustling around in the fruit bowl. “I bought pomegranates at the farmer’s market, just for you.”   
  
She sucks in a breath, presses her tongue into the sore spot. “I’m all right. But thank you.” Gestures back to the hall. “I’m going upstairs, if that’s all right.”   
  
Her mother waves her off, and Sansa takes the stairs up to her bedroom two at a time, bypassing Arya’s door — tightly shut, the same old KEEP OUT sign still plastered on — and heading for her own. Nothing ever changes in this house. Her bedroom, same as it ever was: the wrought-iron canopy bed, the pale pink rug, the elegant desk that now stands where her dollhouse used to sit. So little-girlish, all of it. She prefers austerity now.   
  
Sansa takes  _ The Economic Institutions of Capitalism _ out of her satchel, turns on her bedside lamp, and nestles into the pile of pillows on the bed with a highlighter from the desk in hand. She tries not to think about Baelish’s hands, but it comes over her like a fever. She’s halfway through a daydream involving Baelish and the empty lecture hall when her door bursts open and Arya barges through it.   
  
“What are you reading?”   
  
Arya flops down at the end of her bed, and Sansa sighs, places a bookmark three pages in and tosses the book at her sister. “It’s for a class,” she says, and Arya wrinkles her nose, flipping through the pages.   
  
“How do you stand this?” she asks. “It looks really dull.”   
  
“I think it’s interesting,” Sansa says mildly, though Arya has a point. This book is much denser than Wolff, and it’s much drier, to boot. “It’s a good thing you don’t have to read it.”   
  
“No shit,” scoffs Arya, and tosses it back. Sansa catches the paperback and sets it aside on her nightstand, politely wishing her sister would leave. “Ugh. I have so much work to do over the holiday. It’s not fair.”   
  
“What about college apps?” Sansa can’t resist asking, salting the wound a little. “Shouldn’t you be busy with that, too?” She sees something dark settle over Arya’s features, a tension setting into her jaw. She can’t help laughing a little.    
  
“Fuck  _ off _ ,” Arya says as she swings her legs back over the bed and clomps away. “Go ask Mom.”   
  
“It’s lovely to see you, too,” Sansa calls sweetly as Arya slams the door behind her, but the smile drops from her face as soon as she’s alone again. Grabs for the book again. Opens it back up to page four. Her sister’s attitude is not her problem. Focus on what you can control, she thinks. Focus on mastering arguments for neoliberalism by Black Friday. She can do that much.   
  


* * *

  
  
Thanksgiving passes in a strange, liminal haze. She spends most of the weekend in her room, citing homework and finals to avoid the discomfort of conversation with her siblings. She picks at turkey, at brussels sprouts, at pumpkin pie; excuses herself from the table as quickly as possible. Outside, she can hear Jon and Robb playing football with Rick and some of the neighborhood kids. She can hear geese squawking as they pass like planes overhead. She doesn’t want to talk to anyone. It’s safer up here, in her third-floor tower bedroom with the corner window built into the turret.    
  
Friday passes, and so does Saturday, with the others relaxing into quiet, individual routines in which she thankfully doesn’t have to participate. By Saturday afternoon, she’s moved from her bedroom down to the den, where someone’s put on Lite FM for the soft holiday music and built a fire in the stone fireplace. With Ghost curled up on the couch beside her, snuffling softly and nudging her with his nose each time she shifts or moves as to get up, she soldiers on through Williamson.   
  
“You look awfully comfortable,” comes her mother’s voice, and Sansa glances up with a shrug.   
  
“I didn’t want to waste a perfectly nice day,” she says. “Where’s everyone else?”   
  
Cat clicks her tongue, listing them off on her fingers. “Arya’s over at that boyfriend’s house. Robb took Rick and Bran to fencing practice. I’m not sure where Jon is… I thought I’d make a cup of tea, soak in the silence for a little bit. Do you want one?”   
  
“Sure,” Sansa says. “Do you still have that chamomile with rosehips?”   
  
“I have something like it.” Sansa shrugs again and returns to the book, makes it another three pages before she hears the kettle whistling from the kitchen and her mother returns with a steaming cup of tea: no milk, no sugar, just the way they both drink it.   
  
Cat sits down with her own mug in the dark leather chair near the fire, tucking the dark chenille throw around her her shoulders. “Can I ask what you’re reading?” she asks, and Sansa looks up again.   
  
“It’s just something one of my professors assigned,” she says, holding up the spine. “It’s pretty dense, but he thought I’d get something from it, so I’m muddling through.”   
  
Cat smiles fondly. “You know, I have an old friend who I think still teaches at Williams. In the econ department, even, though I doubt you’ve taken anything with him yet.”   
  
“Maybe,” Sansa says uncertainly. “What’s his name?”   
  
“Baelish, Petyr Baelish,” says her mother, and Sansa’s heart plummets, her face flushes, her heart freezes — fingers tingling, she feels almost frostbitten with panic and fear.    
  
“I have him right now,” she says when she manages to unstick her voice. “For econometrics. I didn’t know you… knew him.”   
  
If Cat has picked up on the panic ravaging Sansa’s brain and body, she’s certainly not letting it show; just leans back in her chair and smiles faintly. “I don’t know why I didn’t think to mention it sooner,” she says. “I guess I just don’t think about him very often. We did our undergrad together, and he was always such a strange little guy.”   
  
“Strange in what way?” She struggles to keep her voice level, maintain a pitch of idle curiosity. If — no, that wouldn’t be —   
  
Cat laughs, and Sansa cringes internally; she hates when her mother, normally so stoic and earnest, gets girlish. “Oh, I think he just always carried a little bit of a flame for me,” she says lightly. “You know. Stupid college stuff. I never considered him anything more than a friend, but I’m sure you know how boys are. You show them even the most platonic affection and they’ll mistake it for something else.”   
  
“Yeah,” Sansa says. She closes the book, forgetting her bookmark, losing her place. “Sorry, I just — I have to go to the bathroom.”   
  
“Don’t let your tea get cold,” her mother calls after her, and Sansa doesn’t answer.   
  


* * *

  
  
The drive back to school feels longer than the one home. She leaves early on Sunday, desperate to beat the traffic, but the two-lane highway is jam-packed with travelers anyway, and Sansa finds herself left alone with her thoughts and the soft acoustic playlist she’d made for the way back. She turns off Sufjan halfway through  _ Seven Swans _ and stares, instead, at the bumper of the beat-up Jetta in front of her.   
  
Baelish will be expecting her. He’ll expect her to have finished the book, all 468 pages of it, rather than abandoning it two hundred-odd pages in with a cold sweat drowning her brow and slicking up her skin as if she’d been caught in a thunderstorm. She thinks, in some uncomfortable way, that he’ll be expecting her to have discovered this odd little connection as well. Baelish is many things, but he’s not stupid.  _ He _ doesn’t think  _ she’s _ stupid. His opinion of her, inexplicable and twisted as it may be, is greater than that.    
  
She drives. She stops at a roadside cafe she often patronizes during this drive, and she orders a coffee and pours it down her throat mindlessly, and she drives again.    
  
The sun is low in the sky by the time she makes it back to school, and with her hands tucked deep in the pockets of her Barbour, Sansa heads downtown, not even bothering to unpack. She walks, because the bracing, cold air invites walking. She can see her breath on the air as she wanders.   
  
The bookstore is open; she slips inside. Looks at the fiction, the nonfiction, the books of art and photography, and flips idly through a glossy coffee table volume of Ellen von Unwerth. The thorny, erotic femininity of the photos makes something churn inside her. Baelish, she realizes, makes her feel the way these women look: delicate in lace, provocative in leather, bare and exposed in nothing at all. Her stomach twists. She pokes her tongue into the sore place in her cheek again.   
  
She buys the book.    
  
It’s dark, and snow has begun to fall when she steps outside onto Water Street. The diner up the block will be open, and she’d rather go there than back to the dining hall, all that unused money on her meal plan be damned. It’s gotten colder in the past hour, though.   
  
Jingle bells, chiming, as she opens the door. A blast of warm air hits her in the face, and she tucks the bag with the photography book more securely under her arm.   
  
“Just one?” asks the hostess, and Sansa scans the diner in hopes of spotting an empty table. What she sees instead makes her heart jump.   
  
“Actually, I’m meeting someone,” she says politely, “he’s right over there —” she gestures, and the hostess shrugs, and Sansa picks her way quickly through the sea of tables before sliding coolly into the booth where Baelish, himself, sits alone with a piece of pie on a plate.   
  
“Hello, Professor,” she says, sprightly, and Baelish looks up at her, only slightly taken aback.   
  
“Miss Stark,” he says after a moment’s hesitation. “How was your holiday?”   
  
Sansa pauses, taking a breath. “It was all right,” she says after a moment. “My family was — they’re a bit much. I’m happy to be back. Is it all right if I sit…?”   
  
“Yes, please, by all means.” Baelish takes another bite of his pie, pumpkin with the whipped cream on the side. “Are you hungry? I’m afraid I’m just finishing dinner.”   
  
“I’ll just have something small,” she says, but he shakes his head.   
  
“My treat.”   
  
As the waitress returns to top up his coffee, Sansa orders a piece of pie of her own — “Lemon meringue, a la mode, please,” and a grilled cheese. She watches Baelish watching her as she settles back into the booth to sip the cup of coffee the waitress brings her.   
  
“I had an interesting conversation with my mother over break,” she says casually. “She says she knows you.”   
  
Baelish cocks a brow. “What’s her name?”   
  
“Catelyn Stark.” Sansa taps her nails on the table. “She says you two went to school together. Of course, she would have been Catelyn Tully back then.”   
  
“Cat. Yes, I knew her at Princeton.” Baelish eats another bite of pie, chews slowly and thoughtfully. “May I ask how the subject arose?”   
  
Sansa shrugs, feigning disinterest. “She just wanted to know who my professors were. Your name came up. She seemed pleasantly surprised.”   
  
“That pleases me.” Sansa’s grilled cheese arrives, and she picks it up delicately, taking small bites and chewing with her mouth tightly shut. Baelish’s sweater sleeves are pushed up, revealing an old-looking watch with a fatigued leather wrist strap. It looks as though he hasn’t shaven in a few days. There’s something pleasantly feral to the way he desperately needs a haircut, his previously close-cropped hair now long enough to show its natural curl.    
  
Her foot finds his beneath the table. His ankle presses back against hers. She studies his face. He doesn’t seem to react.   
  
“Professor?”   
  
“Sansa, you should call me Petyr here. We aren’t on campus.”   
  
“I — okay,” Sansa says uncertainly. “I just wanted to say that I didn’t get to finish the Williamson book you lent me over the break. I might not get it back to you before finals.”   
  
Baelish takes a sip of coffee, raises his eyebrows at her over the cup. “How far did you get?”   
  
“About one hundred and twenty pages in.”   
  
He laughs in disbelief. “That’s much further than I expected. Yes, by all means. Keep it until you’re done.”   
  
“Thank you.” The cheese in the middle of her sandwich is still a little cold. She sets it back down on her plate as the waitress brings her pie, a clean, spherical scoop of vanilla ice cream already melting on top.    
  
Baelish doesn’t talk much as she eats, just watches her swirl her fork through the sweet vanilla puddle. It’s nothing special, just Breyer’s, but she looks at the black flecks dotting the white and the fluffy white meringue beneath it, and feels herself stabilize.   
  
“May I?” asks Baelish, and she nods. But rather than lifting his fork, Baelish drags a finger through the ice cream, pops it into his mouth and sucks it clean with an audible pop. Sansa, against her better nature, shivers.   
  
The waitress returns with their check; he leaves a couple bills on the table without waiting for change. Sansa’s still zipping up her coat as they leave the diner, and she shivers again as the cold air hits her outside, her new book still tucked under her arm.   
  
“Where are you parked?” Baelish asks, and it takes a moment for her to answer.   
  
“I — I didn’t, I walked from campus.”   
  
“In the cold?”   
  
“I like the cold.”   
  
“Hm.” Snow has already begun to dust the shoulders of his black wool peacoat. “Would you prefer a ride back?”   
  
She pauses, considering. “I wouldn’t mind one, no.”   
  
His car is a boxy black Volvo, an older model. She expects a mess, but the front and back seats are both immaculate, and it smells overwhelmingly of peppermint air freshener. Sansa buckles her seatbelt; she waits for Baelish to turn on the car.   
  
“Which hall do you live in?”   
  
“Goodrich,” she says, and he turns the key in the ignition.   
  
Downtown is already lit up and glowing from within, Christmas decorations close to their full strength. The snow, she thinks, is magical. Baelish turns off the radio as soon as it crackles on — she catches a few garbled seconds of talk, and assumes it must be from the public radio station up in Kingston — and so they ride in silence, Sansa staring at the fat white snowflakes illuminated by his headlights.   
  
It takes her a few minutes to catch on to the fact that he’s not driving her back to Goodrich, and when she does, she says as much: “You’re taking a different way back, aren’t you?”   
  
Baelish stops at a stop sign, looks at her with a vague sort of interest. “Do you want to go back to your dorm, Sansa?”   
  
She hesitates, shivering. The truth rests heavy on her tongue, uncooperative and blocky and strange. “No.”   
  
“I didn’t think so.” He presses the gas, and Sansa closes her eyes.

 

* * *

  
His house is a modest bungalow on the outskirts of town, in a style of architecture Sansa recognizes but couldn’t put a name to. He opens the door, ushers her inside, and she stays perfectly still as he flips on a lamp, casting the living room into a muted dim gold. Like his car, the whole house looks immaculately neat.   
  
“Organized home,” he says off her look of approval, “disorganized head.”   
  
She smiles. “I can’t see how that’s true.”   
  
“Maybe, at some point, you will.” He takes off his own coat and then slips hers from her shoulders. “Do you want a cup of tea?”   
  
“No thank you.” She shakes her head. He looks curiously at the book she’s still got under her arm.    
  
“Light reading?” He gestures for the bag, and she hesitantly hands it to him.   
  
“I thought it was… interesting.”   
  
Sansa bites down on her lip as he removes the book from the bag, hears him suck in a breath as he opens it idly. She moves toward the living room, kicks off her shoes to tuck herself onto the couch as he follows. Somehow, she feels more comfortable here than in his office — here, she’s nearly at ease.   
  
“Sansa,” he murmurs as he hovers over the top of her. “Perhaps I should have guessed… but you never fail to surprise me, really...”   
  
She closes her eyes. “Is that good?”   
  
Two fingers tip her chin upward; she opens her eyes to meet his gaze. He’s got the wide book open in the crook of his elbow and a look of unmitigated hunger in his eyes. “Have you done anything like this before?”   
  
(Only thought about it.) “Not really.”   
  
“Would you like to?”   
  
The question hangs in the air, heavy between them like a thundercloud about to burst. She can practically feel the electricity sparking the air; has half a mind to run her hands over her hair to smooth down the static frizz. But she doesn’t move, just looks up at Baelish, who is looking at her like something she’d like to destroy.   
  
“Yes,” she murmurs.   
  
“Say my name, Sansa.”   
  
“Yes, Petyr.”   
  
The book lands shut on the coffee table as he bends to take her face in both hands, cupping her head and holding it still as his lips meet hers in a rough kiss. It’s as good as she hoped, the way he takes control, reducing the decisions she might make to zero. He decides for both of them, pulling her up to a standing position, hands tangling in her hair where it falls loose down her back. With his body flush against hers, she can feel his erection against her thigh.   
  
In her boots, she’s just a smidge taller than him. She wonders if it bothers him.   
  
“Come,” he says roughly as he pulls away, and she follows him to the bedroom, heart hammering in her chest.   
  
It’s pleasantly warm in his small bedroom, and she can hear the radiator clanking as he presses her to the wall with another punishing kiss. Tentatively, slowly, she touches him back, resting her hands on his shoulders and then moving down to the small of his back. Through his wool sweater, she can feel the heat of his body. His hands are everywhere, roaming confidently, taking in her body as if it’s his alone to use.   
  
( _It is_ , she thinks, then gasps as he closes his lips over the place on her neck where her pulse still hammers, and sucks a bruising kiss there.)   
  
“What do you want?” he rasps in her ear, and she hesitates over the question for only a second.   
  
“You.”   
  
“Jesus.” She’s in jeans today, and she regrets the decision immediately. He squeezes her ass through the denim, presses her harder against the door with his other hand still tangled in her hair. “What do you want me to do?”   
  
“Whatever you want,” she says after another moment’s hesitation, and he tugs softly at her hair, then again, harder, as it forces out a gasp.   
  
“Take off your clothes,” he whispers against her ear, and then steps away, folding his arms with an expectant air of waiting. Sansa takes a deep breath and kicks off her boots; pulls her sweater up over her head and lets it fall to the floor beside her. Her fingers move to unbutton her blouse, and as it falls from her shoulders, she watches him bite his own lower lip; she’s wearing a comfortable lace bra, black and delicate and one of her favorites.    
  
His eyes are trained on her body as she shimmies out of her jeans, kicking them off and leaving them next to her sweater in an unkempt pile. It occurs to her that perhaps she ought to fold him, but Baelish’s attention is too rapt; she doubts she’d be able to concentrate with trembling fingers. In her bra and mismatched panties, she awaits another direction, but instead he just watches, eyes clouded with a lycanthropic hunger. She’s never seen him like this before.   
  
“Go on,” he says as she hesitates, and Sansa lets her hair fall forward to cover her breasts as she unfastens her bra; she slowly thumbs her panties off and kicks them aside as they land at her feet. Still, he watches.   
  
She’s breathing heavily, feeling unbearably exposed, as he takes a step forward, cupping her left breast in his hand. He runs his thumb over her nipple, flicking it idly, then kisses her neck again as he takes hold of them both.   
  
“Dirty girl,” he breathes in her ear. “You liked it when I spanked you in my office, didn’t you? Did you go back to your dorm and get yourself off right then and there?” Sansa nods, her breath going ragged; she gasps as he slaps softly at her breasts in response. “Do you want to be spanked again?”   
  
“God, yes,” she whines as he rolls her nipples between his fingers, and he laughs, nipping at her neck, her collarbone, licking up her throat hungrily.   
  
“Good,” Baelish mutters. And still fully clothed, he leads her over to the bed, sits down heavily on the mattress and pulls her down over his lap.    
  
This time he doesn’t make her count. The blows rain down, softer at first and then hard enough to make her cry out, and the more she struggles to keep quiet and hold back, the more challenging it is to keep her composure. She’s lost count by the time she finally cries out, an indignant little squeak as he smacks her hard where she’s still tender from the long drive, and hears him laugh in response, one hand threading back through her hair and lifting up her head, hard, to look him in the eye. “You’ve been horrible, haven’t you?” he asks casually, and she doesn’t know what he’s referring to, but she nods and whines anyway.   
  
“Yeah.”   
  
“When I ask you a question, you should call me by my proper name,” he says slowly, and her face burns again.    
  
“Yes, Petyr.”   
  
“Good girl.” He smacks her again, and again, and by the time he’s finished — letting her roll off sideways onto the mattress, skin on her ass and upper thighs burning red — she’s aching and soaked and already a mess.   
  
Baelish takes her in, rising up to his full height next to the mattress. Sansa closes her eyes until she feels the mattress depress with his weight. He’s taken off his sweater and pants, leaving himself in boxers and a bright white undershirt. His erection, quite prominent through his underwear, is all she can focus on. She licks her lips, opening her legs, intending to wrap them around his waist and drag him back to her mouth, but before she can —   
  
“Over,” he says, and he turns her over bodily, Sansa scrabbling to follow his direction even with her brain in a haze. He runs his hands down her back where he’s crouched behind her, rubbing across the heated skin of her bottom. She presses her face against the pillows, inhaling his scent: musky and minty and dark. Baelish trails a single finger between her lips, up through the split between her cheeks, brushing her wetness over her tight rosebud and lingering for just a moment there. “Hold yourself open,” he commands, and she takes another ragged breath and reaches back to obey.   
  
His own stuttering gasp only makes her heart beat faster. She can feel his breath, hot on her core, and the position is open and vulnerable and far from dignified but as his tongue teases her lips, it only heightens the sensation. She digs her fingers into her own skin as his tongue roams her folds, little teasing kitten licks and dabs — then, in a rush of sensation, he closes his mouth over her mound and sucks, both hands going to clutch at her upper thighs so hard she fears he’ll leave bruises.   
  
Sansa moans openly, all rational thought leaving her brain in an evaporation of mind-blistering pleasure. Two fingers dip inside her, his mouth still moving, all suction and heat and now penetration — she drives back on them, fucking herself back on his hand, his mouth, riding against him. If he’s bothered, he doesn’t show it. His fingers twist inside her and brush against a spot that makes her yelp. Again, and again, and her hips buck against them, and —   
  
“Oh my God, Petyr, Petyr,” she hears herself chanting, “please,  _ pleasepleaseplease _ ,” and he doesn’t hesitate, only speeds up.   
  
_ Please. Please. _   
  
Everything explodes, and he drives her through it, her shaking body and the yelping noises pouring unbidden from her mouth. The hunger inside her, ravenous and dangerous, takes over. She’s shaking when he finally lowers her to the mattress, her body weak and damp with a slick sheen of sweat.   
  
“Good girl,” he murmurs as he lowers himself down atop her. “Very good, Miss Stark, you’ve been so good for me.”   
  
He kisses her softly, her salt and musk heavy on his breath. Funny: she’s never liked her own taste before, always preferred to avoid this dance. Now she lets him kiss her as he slides his own boxers down over his hips. His cock, hard and hot, rubs against her hip, and she reaches down to slide it between her legs, but he stops her: “Not quite yet.”    
  
“I want it,” she murmurs, and he groans against her neck, grinding his erection against her smooth skin. “Please, Petyr, I’ll be good.”   
  
“You will, will you.” His voice is dry as he yanks open a drawer on the bedside table, rips the condom wrapper with his teeth. He busies himself putting it on as she watches, scraping her own teeth over her bruised lower lip.   
  
“Very good.” She nods, watching with hooded eyes as he spreads her legs wide and positions himself at her entrance. Sansa reaches down, hooks her hands behind the backs of her knees, and holds herself a little wider, steadier, as Baelish finally sinks the length of his cock into her.   
  
“Jesus,” he mutters again, lowering himself down onto his hands, and Sansa keens, clenching around him, her eyes sliding shut as he finally, finally begins to fuck her in earnest.   
  
“Good girl. So good.” He kisses her throat, setting a harsh rhythm that forces little gasps out of her with each thrust. She grips her knees harder, hooks her ankles around his shoulders tightening around him again. He fills her tight cunt perfectly, not too long or too short; his breath comes in short pants as his pace speeds up even more.   
  
“I want it,” she repeats, “please, Petyr, I want —”   
  
His moan is wordless, his thrusts erratic as he buries his face in the hollow of her throat. Sansa grinds her clit up against his pelvic bone, clenches harder around his spasming cock, and comes, again, as he thrusts into her again and again.   
  
“You’ve been so good,” he mutters, “done so well. Good girl. My good girl.”   
  
The praise alone makes her melt back into the mattress, thoroughly spent.   
  


* * *

  
  
It’s still snowing.   
  
“I should go,” she says quietly as she looks out the window, still nude and quite comfortable in the warmth of the bedroom. “I have an early class tomorrow.”   
  
“I teach an 8am section,” Baelish says. “I’ll drive you, if you like.”   
  
She thinks about it. Thinks about his warm body next to hers in the bed. It’s too much, too intimate. The idea of a private shower, though, holds its own appeal. Sansa shrugs and moves back to the bed, lets him wrap her in a soft, warm blanket and guide her down. It doesn’t quite feel right — she knows she’ll regret this in fewer than twelve hours, but…   
  
Baelish — Petyr — brushes his lips against the back of her neck, and she presses her body against his under the covers, feels him sigh.   
  
“You know,” she says, “I’ve completely forgotten to study for your final so far.”   
  
He chuffs with laughter. “I always drop your lowest grade if your average is above a ninety.”   
  
“Right.” She remembers hearing that once, dimly, as if through a fog. “Well. Thank you.”   
  
“You know,” Baelish says, pulling her closer, wrapping around her like a python as they both make themselves comfortable. “I’ll have need of a TA next semester. Nothing too taxing, just grading exams, general administrative work…”   
  
“Hm.” She closes her eyes.   
  
“And I’m certain I could repay you with some sort of — letter of recommendation. Perhaps a summer internship.”   
  
“That would be nice.”   
  
“I’ll file the paperwork tomorrow.” He kisses the back of her neck again, right along her spine. “You’ll enjoy the work. I’ll see to it.”   
  
Something feels  _ off _ about the velvety darkness she feels herself drifting off into. There’s something different about how she feels — the hunger that normally gnaws at her in this liminal space between sleep and wakefulness is nowhere to be found.   
  
She feels, for the first time in God knows how long, well and truly sated.   
  
Perhaps she thinks, the mistake will prove itself worth making. She hopes. All she can do is hope.


End file.
